On Wednesday I watched a match in a way I never have before, standing on the top of a grassy hill outside the home of Northampton Town, peering through the gaps at the corners of the Lego-like stands, and wondering how on earth the modern-day
Coventry City had lumbered themselves with this kind of identity crisis.
The "Hillers" are here every time Coventry play at Sixfields and they will continue trekking up that slope for as long as their protests are necessary. One makes a 200-mile round trip to every game from Wimbledon. Another turns 71 next week. They can see roughly a third of the pitch and all they really have, standing in the darkness, is gallows humour and the hope that one day they will have the real Coventry back. You might think they are mad. But nobody can doubt their commitment or loyalty. Or the way fans will fight for their clubs, even when the loyalty is one-way.
Coventry were playing Stevenage and for the first half I sat in the main stand wondering if I had ever been to a professional game where there was absolutely zero chanting from the home crowd. In the second half, I joined the protesters on the hill, where at least there was a sense of old-school football camaraderie and the occasional shout of "Play up, Sky Blues". They won 1-0, though none of us saw the goal, and it all felt so empty-headed and utterly avoidable when, back in Coventry, there is a lovely stadium with a pristine pitch and the kind of facilities that should be the envy of just about every club outside the Premier League.
The Ricoh Arena, you might be surprised to learn, is still a buzz of activity. On the night their former tenants pulled in a crowd of 1,697 against Stevenage (437 away fans) six motorway junctions south, the Ricoh was hosting a "Making Cosmetics" conference. Tickets for Psychic Sally were on sale. The British Tarantula Society exhibition – the Crufts of spiders, apparently – is coming up. Leicester, Wolves and West Brom have played under-21 matches here. Coventry's ladies team stage matches here. So, next season, will FootballCV Reds of the Conference Youth Alliance (Midlands Division). Future events include weightlifting, darts, an antiques fair and a conference on dental technology. Everything really, apart from the reason the stadium was built in the first place.
It is a mess that reduced John Sillett to tears when Coventry's former manager, going back to the days when imaginary champagne was swigged from the FA Cup, took part in a radio interview this season. The old players had a dinner recently and
Ronnie Farmer explained to the Coventry Evening Telegraph why none would accept freebies on offer in Northampton. Farmer played for Coventry in all four divisions in the 1950s and 1960s. He is 78 now. "At my age," he said, "I have realised I may never get to see them again."
Unfortunately, the suspicion is that will resonate with ordinary football people more than it does with Sisu, the Mayfair-based hedge fund that owns the club and brought about the move after complaining that the rent at the Ricoh was too high and, many feel, playing hardball with Coventry City Council, which built and owns the ground.
Sisu seem like an awfully nice bunch. Tim Fisher, working on their behalf as the club's chief executive, when referring to the acrimonious detail, described them last summer as an organisation that "batter people in court". You can imagine what the people of Coventry make of them. "I won't go to Northampton because I class that team as Northampton reserves," Farmer said. "It is not a Coventry team if they are not playing in Coventry."
Some of the Hillers did come down from their usual positions when Northampton played AFC Wimbledon on Tuesday. They sat with the Wimbledon fans and, 35 minutes in, the entire away end held up sky-blue posters declaring: "Fix Football." Thirty-five, because that is the distance in miles between the stadium where Coventry are meant to play and where they have pitched up. Wimbledon's supporters know a thing or two about being messed around. "They want to go home," they sang.
Other posters have been thrusted to the skies this season. You may have seen them when
Coventry played at Arsenal in the FA Cup. On one side: "Why?" Then turned round to ask: "When?"
It is not going to be a quick process. Sisu were recently offered a return to the Ricoh, but were unable to agree terms, saying the relationship with the owners had broken down. Joy Seppala, Sisu's chief executive, says: "I know nothing about football." Maybe someone should explain the emotions the sport creates and the sense of community that is lost in an unloved ground, in the wrong town, with the wrong colours, where there is not even a small corner of the club shop dedicated to its reluctant second team.
What is important is that Coventry's plight is not forgotten in these Premier League-obsessed times. They matter. But the people on the hill already feel neglected. Nobody from Sky – who think nothing of running full-length features about fluffy-mascot races – has been up that slope to find out what they are doing and why. The Football League looks the other way and the indignities stack up.
Seven non-league clubs currently have a higher average attendance than Coventry. The lowest gate – 1,603 – was a midweek February game against Carlisle, and Nuneaton Town pulled in more twice that number the following weekend. Coventry have recorded their 10 worst "home" crowds in history this season. "Is this all you take away?" was the chant from the Stevenage end.
Sixfields is certainly a strange and largely joyless experience. The balls and kit arrive in a red van. The souvenir shop is a trailer. The curtains tremble, the wind howls and, at the top of the hill, the regulars reminisce about Highfield Road, with its worn carpets and mossy terraces, and the good old days when they managed 34 consecutive years in the top division.
I popped in on the way and it is not such an easy place to find these days, swallowed up by a housing estate that has tried to blend in but will never colour co-ordinate with the surrounding red-brick terraces. Look closely and you can make out the faded paintwork of "Cut the Blues", the old barber's shop on the corner of Swan Lane. But there is not a great deal else. The ex-servicemen's club is long gone.
The Binley Oak, one of the city's great ska pubs, is now a school. Shops and businesses have closed down. The woman in the Nisa Local told me the place had gone downhill almost instantly and the sculpture that is supposed to mark the significance of Highfield Road is, well, unusual.
"The City", commissioned by the housing developers, actually looks quite impressive. Unless, like me, you are a bit of a pedant. Three of the four dates are wrong, including one that is 24 years out.
The club's original name, Singers FC, is missing its second "S" and the picture of a commemorative sewing machine is the football equivalent of putting Lady Godiva in a duffle jacket. Singers, to clarify, were named after the bicycle factory on Alma Street, not the New York sewing machine company.
The protest ribbons on Sky Blue Way were still there, though, and it did not take long standing on that hill – memo for next time: don't wear suede shoes – to be reminded about the sacrifices fans are willing to make to protect their own.
The Hillers will be back on Tuesday for a game against Bradford City they will not see, blowing their whistles, hoping their voices carry inside the ground they call "The Library". Except the people responsible for this mess never hear them. Thirty-five miles away, there is a £113m stadium, with 32,609 seats, sky-blue trimmings and a statue of Jimmy Hill, and it is preparing for a spider show.
